On-campus residents spend 16 hours without power and wifi

Freshman Christina Raymo said she passed time during the 16 hour power and WiFi outage Sunday by playing tag with her friends in the hallways of Maria Hall.

Several buildings on Webster’s home campus suffered power and ethernet disruption due to an off-campus property fire. The power outage started at 4:30 a.m. Sunday and lasted until 7 p.m.

Raymo, who lives in Maria Hall, did not have any power in her dorm room. She said she could not do any of her online classes until the power came back, leaving her only a few hours to do an assignment that was due by 11:59 p.m. that night.

Freshman Maria Hall resident Katie Fields said she was upset about the power outage because her food supply was ruined.

“I’m gluten-free so all my food is expensive and all the stuff in the freezer that I had saved I can’t use anymore,” Fields said. “It sucks because it’s all I eat when they serve food at Marletto’s that has gluten in it, that’s my only source of food.”

Marletto’s served food without power, but had to improvise. For brunch they offered bread and other dry foods, and for dinner pizza was served outside in the courtyard.

Another Maria Hall resident, freshman Alex Ainsworth, said she could not shower because there was no light and it was too dark to see. She left campus for most off the day until the power returned to campus

In order to do her homework, Ainsworth said she went to Panera for WiFi and power for her computer.

“My friends actually had power in West Hall. So if we weren’t going to get power we were going to go stay with them. It was really annoying that we couldn’t do anything in our rooms,” Ainsworth said. “The worst part was not being able to shower, I really really wanted to shower when I got back and I couldn’t.”

Freshman West Hall resident Minh Huynh said he had power but no connection to the WiFi. He said it ruined his plans of doing homework to stay ahead in his classes. Instead, he said he watched movies he had on his computer.

“I woke up at 4 p.m. and was expecting to do homework the whole day, so I spent the whole day doing absolutely nothing when I thought I was going to be productive,” Huynh said.

West Hall Resident Kylie Georgian said the biggest problem was the internet being down. She had assignments she had not turned in and had to wait a couple hours for the WiFi to be restored.

West Hall resident Katie Stevens said she let her friend who lives in Maria come to her room for the day. West Hall and East Hall had power throughout the day. She said it was nice to spend part of the day outside because of the power outage.

“We actually went outside and it was a nice day,” Stevens said.

Maria Hall resident Tk Mays said he hoped there would not be class the following Monday. He said he did not want to worry about not doing his homework the night before because of the WiFi being down.

Mays said while the outage was a hassle, he enjoyed spending the day adventuring the halls of Maria in the dark.

“When it started getting dark we were just going to start playing tag and hide-and-go-seek in the halls to take advantage of it,” Mays said. “I didn’t want the power to come back on, I was kind of enjoying living in the dark.”